The Senate this month will navigate a minefield of concerns from across the ideological divide among Republicans as well as lobbyists and stakeholders as it works to tweak and approve the House-passed “big, beautiful” budget bill.
Democrats, meanwhile, are lining up an assault on the filibuster-proof bill using all the procedural tools at their disposal, particularly by subjecting the mammoth package to a thorough scrubbing for compliance with the “Byrd rule” barring extraneous provisions. Any section found to violate the rule, which among other things requires a budgetary impact that can’t be just “merely incidental” to some other long-sought policy goal, can be stripped from the bill unless backers can get 60 votes to keep it.
The White House and GOP leaders have an ambitious timeline to get the package done by the July Fourth recess, though many see the August recess as a more likely backstop.
